...... made it through another week! 

This one's been a bit rough, and I really don't know why, well, I do, kind of.

I think I'm addicted to "drama".  I've had it all my life, and even though I think I hate it, consciously, subconsciously my insane brain craves the rush, sick huh? 

It always happens, when things go really good for too long, I start LOOKING for shit to be wrong, and if I can't find anything, I start to dredge things up from the past to dwell on until I'm in a full-fledged funk over them.  I hate myself when I do this shit.  I never even used to realize that I was doing it, but I've been paying more attention lately to my moods and the things going on around me, and how I'm reacting, etc.  Why does life and all this shit have to be so damned complicated??

I've been really working on my thought patterns, AND concentrating again on getting rid of this weight.  I like to pile on the work don't I?  LOL!!  Like one of those things by itself isn't enough work to do..........

I managed yesterday to get myself OUT of the funk I was heading into, so I felt pretty accomplished with it.  One day in a row.....  I'm on a roll.......

Went to the doctor yesterday and she was pleased with my physical strength.  I've gained quite a bit of weight back, sad to say.  She didn't weigh me because she knew I was a bit depressed over it, but I know I've gained.  This last year, well, two years, has been one thing after another and this last year, well, forget it.

Having endured the abuse I have, and the traumas in my life, I've been an emotional eater for a long long time.  I had it pretty much under control until a year ago, then it all just came back.  I get angry at myself for letting it take me over, and I get even angrier when I think about why I do it.  Why do other humans intentionally hurt other humans?  I'll never understand this.....  I have never in my life intentionally hurt anyone, and I've never hurt anyone just to do it.  I won't say I've never hurt anyone, I have, AFTER I've been hurt.  It's natural to hurt back, to defend yourself and give back what was given to you.  But I'm talking about hurting someone without provocation, and people you don't even KNOW.  What makes someone do that?  I can only guess they must be so bankrupt in their own lives that they only feel better if they are hurting someone else.  I don't know.  I do know I'm tired of being the one on the receiving end of it.

When I was young, I used to dream about being a hermit.  It's a small wonder with the shit I had handed to me as a kid.  That idea is looking good to me again!   I'm about sick of people.......  I'd like to take my family and move and go somewhere far away from everyone else, and say FUCK YOU to the rest of the world.......   Not really practical, but I so get tired of hurtful people and the mess they leave behind.....  I used to feel sorry for these people, now I just don't really give a shit, I'm tired of cleaning up their messes.........

The long, often sad, story....
OK, this is going to take a while, a while to type and to read....
I've endured a lot in my 46, nearly 47 years, and somedays I wonder HOW I have. I never have had a "normal" life, whatever that is, but it took me many years to realize that fact. I lived in a small town, my maternal grandparents lived next to us, my dad's sister and her husband (my aunt and uncle) lived across the street from us. At about age two my uncle across the street started molesting me. I say age two, I can't remember exactly, being so young, but I was young enough I was carried just about everywhere, so I had to be young, and I remember my toncils coming out, and I wasn't quite three then, and it was about the same time. Being so young, you just think THIS is what life is supposed to be like, fun huh??  Also about age two, my father started to beat me on a regular basis.  The first serious beating I remember was when I tried to get the gallon of milk out of the fridge by myself, and being so young, it was too heavy and I dropped it.....  I got beat.  I got beat if I even looked at him wrong.  Sometimes I did do things to aggravate him, mostly protecting my siblings (I was the oldest), and why I don't know, he never beat them, he spanked them, but never beat them.  But I would try to stop it, so then I got beat.  Nice examples of men I had, my uncle and my father.

The sexual abuse went on until somewhere around age 11 or 12, I don't remember exactly.  I don't remember MOST of my childhood, just bits and pieces.  But I got old enough to KNOW what he was doing was wrong and I told him NO, and my dog was upset because I was upset, and she bit him right in the butt!  She disappeared in a couple of days from then.  I KNOW he killed her, or hauled her off or something to that effect.  He never molested me again though, but he STILL harassed me, and up until a few days before I got married (at 22) he would say horrid obscene things to me. 

When I finally told my parents, of course, nothing happened.  They were upset, and apalled, but more because of how it "looked" than about what happened to ME.  He also abused two of my sisters.  NONE OF US EVER GOT ANY HELP.  My parents never really spoke about it after the day they found out, and NOTHING was done to my uncle.  NOTHING.  They moved away, to a new neighborhood with all new children who didn't know what he was.....  I felt SO guilty, I felt terrible because I KNEW he would prey upon them.  I would even see him hanging outside the cinemas on summer afternoons waiting......  makes me sick to my stomach.....

My father beat me until I was a bit past 18.  I finally had enough and I told him if he EVER touched me again, I was going to the police.  He finally stopped.  And so where was my mother during all this, you ask??  Well, I cannot EVER remember ONE TIME HER TRYING TO STOP HIM.  She would usually just sit in the kitchen, sometimes she would cry, sometimes not.  She NEVER DID A THING.  Now I have three kids and it would take someone knocking me out for ME to allow someone to do that to MY KIDS.  I never understood her lack of actions.  And he NEVER HIT HER, and he was NEVER DRUNK.  He did all this sober.  He NEVER admitted to me what he did was wrong, never, he died and NEVER ADMITTED ANY WRONG DOING TO ME. He admitted it to my sisters, but NEVER ME.  I also never got any kind of remorse or apologlies from my uncle, not that I really ever expected any......

So my childhood sucked pretty much.  In high school I had such low self esteem.  I started gaining weight, and from that point on, it's been a major struggle for me.  I guess when I started to mature and started looking like a woman, and boys started to notice, it scared me.  I had only ever known pain and abuse from boys/men so I think the weight gain and eating was for comfort AND to put up a wall to stop them, who wanted a fat girl??  But that also isolated me, because I still WANTED to be loved.  It is such a HORRIBLE ordeal and situation to go through....

When I was a junior in HS I fell in love for the first time, well, I really fell in love as a sophmore, with a boy that lived on street over.  It really was "love at first sight" such as it can be at 15!  But at that point in my life, it was TRUE LOVE.  We never really dated much, a few times, he was very troubled, he also had a lot of problems at home, he lived with his grandparents because his parents were  a mess.  In the fall of my junior year he moved away.  It wasn't THAT far away, but when you're a kid, even 20 miles feels like the moon!  I missed him so much, I hated that he moved.  In January of that year, the 31st of January, he was killed in a car accident, along with his sister.  I was beyond devestated.  I couldn't handle it at all.  And of course, I got NO support from my family.  I c an't even remember my parents EVEN TALKING TO  ME ABOUT IT.  Their way of helping was to keep me away from it, to avoid ANYTHING TO DO WITH IT.   The hurt from his death was like nothing I could have imagined.  My heart was truly broken, and to this day, I've not totally gotten over it, and it's been over 30 years.

I struggled through the rest of my HS years, graduated, and finally started to have interest in someone else, boy what a HUGE mistake that was.  I met and thought I loved this guy, who was a few years younger than me, looking back, I had to be insane with that situation, and I probably wasn't in my right mind, considering all the shit I'd been through.  It was doomed from the beginning, but lasted long enough for me to get pregnant.  I of course thought life was over at that point.  I was VERY christian at that point in time, and being pregnant and unmarried was about as bad as it gets.  I seriously considered adoption, but I had no where to go, and my ever "loving" parents vowed to help me ONLY IF I KEPT THE BABY.  What choice did I have??  I actually did have choices, I just didn't know them at the time.  Abortion was out of the question, even though HE voiced his opinion to that, what an ass.

So I had my baby girl, and struggled best I could, 21 living at home with my parents and a newborn and dealing with them trying their damndest to take her over.  It was a horrible situation, but at the time, I didn't realize how horrible. 

When my daughter was a year old, I met my husband.  He was wonderful.  He was kind, and loving, and understanding and immediately accepted my daughter.  I could not believe someone like him could love ME.  I was in heaven, it was all I had ever wanted, and I just couldnt' believe it was "real".  But it was.  We were married a year later.

Life was relatively good for the first few years.  Then his mother passed away, and this affected him tremendously.  Shortly after that happened, I hurt myself at work, and struggled for a year before needed major surgery to fix a ruptured disc in my back.  It is about this point that things started to change, and not for the better. 

It was a gradual decline, my health got better for a bit, we bought a house, things were OK.  Then I hurt myself again, and was off from work.  I then also started having "female" problems, and was told I only had a 50/50 chance of having anymore children.  And that if I didn't try right then to get pregnant, chances were next to nothing of EVER having any.  SO we tried, nothing.  I endured tests and surgeries, and drugs, hubby had tests, nothing.  So we had all but given up and about a year after we stopped "trying" I got pregnant with our first daughter together. 

I thought things were going to be great, but while I was pregnant I started having more health issues, pain in my legs, unexplained issues with my nerves and muscles.  It got worse and worse.  My daughter was born and the pain continued.  Two years went by, and my health kept getting worse.  I got pregnant again, against the  odds I was pregnant again.  This time we had a son, and this time I had my tubes tied!  Three was enough, and at my age and health, I didn't need anymore.

After my son was born, I aggressively sought help for my declining health.  Mean while, hubby's drinking was escalating beyond just social drinking.  He ALWAYS drank, but it was just on the weekends and usually not until he was drunk.  Now, he drank nearly every day, and nearly always until he was drunk.  At first it didn't cause major problems, but gradually it got worse and worse. 

In the mid-90's I finally got a diagnosis of "fibromyalgia".  I didn't even know what it was.  But once I found out I was again devestated.  What next??  Couldn't live stay good from more than a few months??  So now I have to live with life long debilitating pain, and there's NOTHING they can do?  I was horribly depressed, and hubby drank more and more.

My health continued to decline, and by 1998, I got to the point where I couldn't hardly get up and go to a regular job anymore.  I started to seek out something I could do at home, and turned my jewelry designing hobby into a business.  I was soon able to quit work and selling jewelry became my business, and a pretty good one for a long time.

My health would get better for a while, then worse again.  Never any real improvements.  My husband was drifting farther and farther away from me, just when I needed him the most.  At one point I even found him conversing with other women on the internet, and I was devestated.  I even found cell phone bills that were over the top from him calling these women.  I was broken hearted, and scared to death I was losing him, and that he was seeing them "in person".  He swore to me he never had, and he vowed to work on us.  I needed him, more than ever and we worked to move past it.   I hurt so bad all the time, it affected just about everything.   My health finally got to the point where I was angry.  I went to my doctor and flat told him "Maybe I have something else OTHER THAN FIBRO".  He NEVER tested me for another thing, EVER. 

So, I got a referral to another doctor, and on the FIRST VISIT she told me that fibro was NOT causing my problems.  She sent me for xrays and on the next visit she showed me what it was that was causing so much pain to me.  My right knee was GONE, the cartilage had all been worn away, and my hips were nearly gone.  I had arthritis, and from continuously walking on it, as my other doctor told me to do,  it wore out my knee.

So I needed knee replacement surgery.  I was treated for the pain in the meantime, with synthetic morphine patches no less.  The pain subsided, but eventually, those patches caused me HORRIBLE DEPRESSION.  After being on them a year, I went off of them, and the withdrawal from that drug nearly killed me.  I have NEVER been through such an ordeal.  The affects lasted about two weeks, then I finally started feeling human again.  The drug has since been linked to several deaths, and I'm NOT suprised. 

Shortly after that I had my knee surgery, total replacement.  WOW.  Talk about PAIN.  Horrible.  But worth it......  After my knee was fixed, I think went to a foot specialist, who found the REAL source for ALL MY PROBLEMS.  I had a congenital defect in my left foot, which caused me to bare most of my weight on my right leg, it messed up my right knee, my hips, and my left foot was a mess.  So in April of last year I had foot surgery, four months after my knee replacement.  I was feeling wonderful, I was getting my life back. 

Hubby had been coming around a bit, I felt more connected to him than I had for many years.  After finding the cell phone bills and laying it all out, we made a real effort and it was working.  Then I got slammed, slammed harder than I have EVER been slammed by ANYTHING I had endured so far.

About four weeks after my foot surgery I got an email from a woman wanting a piece of jewelry.  She claimed to have been to my website and that she also suffered from "fibro".  Well, I had taken all that off my website long before this email, and that made me REALLY suspicious right off the bat.  But I thought, OK, she read it back then, no biggy.  So I emailed her back the info she ask for.  She responded again, and started going on and on about how wonderful a husband I must have, and started relating to me her sorted affair with a married man.....  it all just seemd TOO conicidental. 

From about the second email, I thought she was the woman from the cell phone bills, STILL at this point, I'm thinking it was ALL internet and phone shit.  More emails, more details, more in my face....  I had been asking hubby all along if it was her, and he said no.  Finally I told him, if you don't tell me the truth, I'm asking HER.  He came clean.  Yes, he had a brief affair with her, four years earlier BEFORE I even got the cell phone bills.  And by the time I go them, he ended it.  But she wouldn't let him go.  She had been blackmailing him for four years with telling ME, because he thought I'd leave him, and he told her that, so she used it to keep him emailing and phoning her.

I felt totally destroyed.  My heart was completely and totally broken.  Hubby was so remorseful and so ashamed of what he did.  He told me that day that he ALWAYS loved ME, and he didn't know why he did what he did.  The whole thing just about killed him, litterally.  The stress had his blood pressure so high, the doctors were afraid he was going to stroke out.  I was hurt beyond words, but I loved my husband.  He was remorseful and wanted us to work it out, I agreed. 

From that point on I stopped responding to her emails.  She would NOT let up.  She figured out I guess that I got the whole story.  She continued for two more months harassing me.  We even sent her a no contact email, which only escalated her anger.  We hired a PI to contact her, got her on TAPE and told her to leave us alone, THAT didn' t work.  I finally had to go to the prosecutor's office and file a formal complaint against her.  She lives in another city, and they sent her a letter telling her to appear for the mediation, but of course, she never showed.  But she's never emailed me again either.  She's really messed up.

So, for the last year hubby and I have been reconciling, getting to the root of the problems we had, and we have dug them out and we're working on them.  We truly love each other and that is what counts.  He stopped drinking, and it's been nearly a year since he's had ANY alcohol at all!

So that is MY story, for anyone that cares.  Looking back on it all, I guess I should consider myself really lucky.  I'm still here, I'm in one piece and I have my mind realitively intact!  All things considered, that's pretty damn good!!

Peace to all......

Ginny

Of all the people on the planet, the Dalai Lama is the ONE person I would love to be able to sit and talk with.  I mean, how often would you get the opportunity to "chat" with an enlightened being, here on THIS planet???

Once again some helpful words of wisdom coming through one of the Yahoo Groups I belong to....  I think the universe IS trying to tell me something, so I think I'll listen.  This is from the Dalai Lama:

The Dalai Lama’s Wisdom About Anger More Inspiration Solutions 
Adapted from The Pocket Dalai Lama, arranged by Mary Craig (Shambhala, 2002).
In Buddhism, any thought, feeling or mental state that undermines our peace of mind from within--all negative thoughts and emotions such as anger, pride, lust, greed, envy and so on--are considered to be afflictions. Far from recognizing their destructive potential and challenging them, we often nurture and reinforce them. But. . . their nature is wholly destructive. They are the very source of unethical conduct.

Simple Solution:

His Holiness The Dalai Lama offers wisdom about anger:

1. Anger is the real destroyer of our good human qualities; an enemy with a weapon cannot destroy these qualities, but anger can. Anger is our real enemy.

2. If we live our lives continually motivated by anger and hatred, even our physical health deteriorates.

3. Anger or hatred is like a fisherman’s hook. It is very important for us to ensure that we are not caught by it.

4. We have a saying in Tibet: “If you lose your temper and get angry, bite your knuckles.” This means that if you lose your temper, do not show it to others. Rather, say to yourself, “Leave it.”

5. According to Buddhist psychology, most of our troubles are due to our passionate desire for and attachment to things that we misapprehend as enduring entities. The pursuit of the objects of our desire and attachment involves the use of aggression and competitiveness. . . These mental processes easily translate into actions, breeding belligerence.

Such processes have been going on in the human mind since time immemorial, but their execution has become more effective under modern conditions. What can we do to control and regulate these “poisons”--delusion, greed and aggression? For it is these poisons that are behind almost every trouble in the world.

5. Hatred can be the greatest stumbling block to the development of compassion and happiness. If you learn to develop patience and tolerance towards your enemies, then everything becomes much easier--your compassion towards all others begins to flow naturally.

6. Happiness cannot come from hatred or anger. Nobody can say, “Today I am happy because this morning I was angry.” On the contrary, people feel uneasy and sad and say, “Today I am not very happy, because I lost my temper this morning.”

* Through kindness, whether at our own level or at the national and international level, through mutual understanding and through mutual respect, we will get peace, we will get happiness, and we will get genuine satisfaction.

I REALLY do need to purge myself of all the anger I have.  I have enough health problems without adding to them with hatred and anger.....  Plus, it just gives way too much energy to the source, and she sure as shit doesn't deserve ANY energy at all from me, good, bad or otherwise.  But as you can tell, I've not let it go yet....  I am a work in progress and I AM working on it.....

I am trying to focus on all the positives I have, which are tremendous....  that one negative isn't even in our lives anymore at all, so I need to just let it go......  let it go, and be done with it.......

I'm trying........